He's Fishing For Submarines?

Skip Miller

Then there was the afternoon that freshwater fisherman showed up on Buckroe Pier, wife in escort and bonhomie at full tilt.

He said he had been to Buckroe before, years ago when the kids were small and vacation trips involved a sack of bologna sandwiches and a jug of mama's lemonade.

Been married 40 years, he said, and this is the first time we haven't had kids living at home. We took this week to just roam around, the wife and me, and not get in any hurry doing it.

He was a little more vague when asked where he called home. He said it was outside of Richmond. That could have meant Tennessee or it could have meant Jackass Flats.

He wasn't much of a fisherman.

Still, he had a weathered, friendly face and a smiling way of getting strangers to lower their shields.

He'd tell you his story and grin while he waited to hear yours. His wife wandered off to tell anybody who would listen how good it was to see her man have fun.

There were a score of others on the pier, catching spot and croaker while the sun went down and the moon came up hickory-fire orange and the tide worked its way up the beach and over the feet of the sweetheart set.

The croaker were biting on blood worms and cut squid. The spot were biting on anything the croaker missed. Bluefish in the 2-to-5-pound class were being caught from the end of the pier.

Inland, in the tracts, projects, and neighborhoods of the Peninsula, the air had been heavy and still. Thunder storm air. Air that meant a man could work up a good sweat just unfolding a lawn chair.

But on the pier, an onshore breeze was close to cool wind. Rather than sweat, folks were content and comfortable as they waited for the next croaker attack.

And the freshwater fisherman rambled on.

He had baited with a piece of squid and he was dragging it along the bottom, near the pilings.

The line snagged.

"Guess I hooked into a stump," he said. "Seems like if there is a stump out there, I can find it."

His wife asked what kind of fish he was after and he said he didn't know.

"You ain't never caught nothing but perch in all the years I've known you," she said.

He called her "Sweets." He told her years ago he caught a fair amount of bass and bream. Then he got busy raising kids and the fishing had to wait. But he still remembered all the tricks. You never forget the tricks, he said.

When he hooked the croaker, you would have thought he had snagged Neptune himself. He bellowed instuctions to the fish and commands to his wife.

Eventually the croaker, all 10 inches of it, lay on the dock, glistening and silvery and croaking.

He wouldn't touch the fish.

"You want that?" he asked a nearby comrade.

No thanks.

He walked down the pier to another group. "You can have this fish if you take it off the line," he said. They helped him out.

He caught two more fish, each time giving them to he who would free them from the hook.

The moon was big and bold and looking like old brass. There was the lowing of ships' horns and heliocopters buzzed in and out of Norfolk Naval Air Station like giant fireflies.

On the pier, there weren't many fish being caught. The serious ones had pulled on their jackets and, with patient resolve, were waiting for the next tide change.

The freshwater fisherman and his wife were sitting on a bench, arms around each other. They talked of a son who lived in Florida. The son had caught a big something. The man thought it was a snapper.

He wanted to catch a big something, too. Anything that would get him into the playoff of bragging rights. "I'll show that boy his daddy still knows a thing or two about fishing," he said.

Yes, dear, said his wife. You certainly will.

"I don't know the name of everything that swims out here," he said. "But I reckon there's something that gets right big."

He turned to the nearest fisherman. "What's the biggest thing out here?" he asked.

"Probably a submarine."

The freshwater fisherman grinned and bobbed his head. "They been biting lately?" he asked slyly.

His wife chuckled and wandered off to tell strangers her man was fishing for submarines.